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Topic:Parmenides
In all that you say have you any other purpose except to disprove the being of the many? Note: 127e For you, in your poems, say The All is one, and of this you adduce excellent proofs; and he on the other hand says There is no many; Note: 128b these writings of mine were meant to protect the arguments of Parmenides against those who make fun of him and seek to show the many ridiculous and contradictory results which they suppose to follow from the affirmation of the one. Note: 128d And may not all things partake of both opposites, and be both like and unlike, by reason of this participation?—Where is the wonder? Note: 129c do you think that there is an idea of likeness apart from the likeness which we possess, Note: 130b And would you make an idea of man apart from us and from all other human creatures, or of fire and water? I am often undecided, Parmenides, as to whether I ought to include them or not. And would you feel equally undecided, Socrates, about things of which the mention may provoke a smile?—I mean such things as hair, mud, dirt, or anything else which is vile and paltry; Note: 130c visible things like these are such as they appear to us, and I am afraid that there would be an absurdity in assuming any idea of them, Note: 130d become similar, because they partake of similarity; and great things become great, because they partake of greatness; and that just and beautiful things become just and beautiful, because they partake of justice and beauty? Yes, certainly, said Socrates that is my meaning. Then each individual partakes either of the whole of the idea or else of a part of the idea? Can there be any other mode of participation? Note: 131a Then, Socrates, the ideas themselves will be divisible, and things which participate in them will have a part of them only and not the whole idea existing in each of them? Note: 131c Then in what way, Socrates, will all things participate in the ideas, if they are unable to participate in them either as parts or wholes? Note: 131e And if you go on and allow your mind in like manner to embrace in one view the idea of greatness and of great things which are not the idea, and to compare them, will not another greatness arise, which will appear to be the source of all these? Note: 132a the ideas are, as it were, patterns fixed in nature, and other things are like them, and resemblances of them—what is meant by the participation of other things in the ideas, is really assimilation to them. Note: 132d Then the idea cannot be like the individual, or the individual like the idea; for if they are alike, some further idea of likeness will always be coming to light, and if that be like anything else, another; and new ideas will be always arising, if the idea resembles that which partakes of it? Note: 132a But there is also an idea of mastership in the abstract, which is relative to the idea of slavery in the abstract. These natures have nothing to do with us, nor we with them; they are concerned with themselves only, and we with ourselves. Note: 134a But the knowledge which we have, will answer to the truth which we have; Note: 134b none of the ideas are known to us, Note: 134b Would you, or would you not say, that absolute knowledge, if there is such a thing, must be a far more exact knowledge than our knowledge; and the same of beauty and of the rest? Note: 134c And if God has this perfect authority, and perfect knowledge, his authority cannot rule us, nor his knowledge know us, or any human thing;